Secondary school students throughout Mayo are being urged to submit their entries for SciFest at Athlone Institute of Technology (AIT ) before the closing date of March 9.
The competition is open to all second-level students and entries may either be individual or group projects. Project categories are in the physical sciences, biological sciences and technology. SciFest will be held at AIT on Thursday April 14.
More than 6,200 students have exhibited some 2,600 projects in SciFest over the past three years. In 2010, Athlone hosted the largest staging of the competition in the country, with 170 projects from 24 schools in counties Westmeath, Galway, Roscommon, Longford, Offaly, Cavan and Mayo participating.
Last year’s winners at AIT were Frank O’Meara-Haslam, Darragh McConaghy and Graham Regan from St Mary’s Secondary School, Edenderry. The fifth-year students’ project, entitled ‘Man, machinery and fields’, measured the magnetic field generated by a Nintendo DS and compared the findings to international safety standards.
SciFest is jointly funded by Intel and Discover Science and Engineering and is supported by a number of other partners.
Entry forms must be completed and returned to AIT before Wednesday March 9. Late entrants will not be considered. Entry forms may be downloaded from www.scifest.ie and from www.ait.ie/scifest
Further information is available from Dr Noreen Morris, telephone 090 647 1878 and email nmorris@ait
